Gasp
by TheShadowArchitect
Summary: Claire is getting real tired of catering to the asshat martyr lying on her couch. Whumpy one-shot. (Part of the "Cut Again" series previously posted to AO3 and tumblr)


It was 2:38 AM and Matt was exhausted. Lying still on Claire's couch, he was almost ready to give up- even if he would never admit it. He'd been pretty sick a few times before, really sick maybe one other time in his life. This time was beating that out by a long shot.

Broken ribs, then flu that he'd done his utmost to ignore, then bacterial infection in his lungs. Pneumonia until he couldn't continue fighting through it. Until he'd given in and collapsed on Claire's doorstep a few moments after she'd returned home from work.

Now his chest was on fire, lungs feeling as though they were filled with molasses. He was taking short, fast, tight breaths, forcing the air through swollen, fluid-filled lung tissue on willpower alone. He could hear himself breathing- the sound of it drowning out most of the sounds outside a 5 meter radius. Vulnerable. Across the room, he knew Claire could hear it too. She was thinking. Coming to a conclusion he didn't like.

"I'm calling the hospital." At first he couldn't get up the breath or energy to protest. He was so very tired but afraid to sleep for fear his innate ability to breathe wouldn't be sufficient to keep him drawing breath. The pulse ox clip on his finger was beeping, the shrill sound cutting through his labored, wheezing gasps. If he lost momentum now he feared the alarm would never stop.

His chest was screaming. Pain, sharp and grating, cut a path between the broken ribs on his right side. Every breath was agony- the balance between air hunger and pain a finely wrought round of tug-of-war.

With as much energy as he could muster, he shook his head.

"What the hell, Matt?" Claire said, anger bubbling to the surface. She was tired, he could sense it. Not quite at his point yet but she was doing this after a sixteen hour day that should have ended eight hours ago. She didn't need this. Even so, he needed her to understand what was at stake.

"Give me… a chance." He said. Suffocating.

"If I wait another hour I'll have a corpse on my couch." Her voice was serious. He could hear her arms waving, coming to rest nervously across her chest. Her heart rate picked up. He was reminded of the night he first met her. We need to talk about what happens when you die right here on my couch. "I'm not cremating you in my damn oven, Matt." It took him a good minute to recover enough oxygen to speak.

"Forty… five minutes… then." He gasped out. "S'it" The resulting pain and air hunger sent a wave of fresh sweat across his face and arms. His breathing quickened, the alarm sounded off shrilly, causing pain in his ears he was too weak to block out. He clamped his eyes shut tight, willing the accompanying nausea to pass. If that was the result of a few words of protest, he didn't want to experience vomiting.

The heat of his skin quickly evaporated the perspiration, adding to the sticky, miserable feeling. He could almost feel steam rising off his skin. The blanket underneath him was damp and cold. Claire had replaced it three times already.

After a few minutes of quiet, the beeping thankfully stopped.

"If I leave for ten minutes, will you be breathing when I get back?" She asked finally, matter-of-factly. He gave her a look that probably came off as more pathetic than reassuring. He couldn't speak now. Seconds away from passing out, he thought. He couldn't tell her that. He pulled together a last burst of energy and nodded.

She looked uncertain. But finally she left, returning six minutes later with a transport tank of O2. He heard her bump it against the door as she carried it in. He'd somehow fought the impending and unsettlingly welcome threat of unconsciousness for the eternity he'd been alone. She set the hollow tank by the end of the couch and started fitting tubing to it.

"My neighbor on the 6th floor, she's got emphysema. This is her emergency tank in case the power goes out and her condenser stops working." She explained, begrudgingly. "I've driven her to the hospital a few times. I was hoping to never have to cash in that favor." She finished.

"Don' need. Give… back." He gasped. A few seconds later the shrill beeping started up again. Claire ignored him and continued to untangle the tubing somewhere on the right of his head. It was getting more difficult to judge distances. He couldn't tell if that was because he was slowly losing consciousness or if fluid was building up in his ears too.

He felt her loop the cannula around his face, but he was too weak to bat it away. A few seconds later cool air hit his nose. They sat quietly for a few minutes.

He still felt like he was trying to breathe through water, still felt like his chest was ripping apart with each breath. The panic, though, the air hunger, had subsided. The horrible beeping had stopped and he began to feel as though he could hang on a few more minutes.

"Thank you." He said finally, quietly.

"Doesn't change anything." Claire said. She sounded disappointed, angry. "Buys you a few hours, maybe. You still need IV antibiotics, pain meds, Prednisone, breathing treatments. Things I can't give you here, Matt." She sounded exhausted, sad and a bundle of other things he couldn't identify. She sounded like a mother who was at the end of her rope with a belligerent son. He hated that.

"Then give me the few hours." He said resolutely, his voice cracking a tiny bit. Tears starting, hot on his face. They were only partially from pain. He was done, so tired, so hurting. And he couldn't even tell her. There was no reason he should refuse medical care here. No reason at all. The pneumonia wasn't an injury caused by his work as Daredevil. He could easily explain that he'd been mugged, had his wallet taken in an alley on the way home from work, his ribs broken. That he didn't have insurance- had been afraid he wouldn't be able to pay and so had waited… But that wasn't the issue.

He hadn't been to a hospital since the accident. Doctor's offices, sure. There had been a nurse who came to the orphanage a few times to check him over. But an actual, real hospital? It had been close to twenty years. He couldn't remember anything good about them. Just pain, fear, and blindness. Hospitals were where nightmares started. Imprinted on his mind. "Please." He begged.


End file.
